THE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE YEAR 199 



is in the early months, then, that we suffer most 

 from cutting winds, the question of shelter for a 

 spring garden should receive fullest consideration. 



It may be that our spring garden is a snug 

 quadrangle, three sides enclosed and bounded on 

 the fourth by a thin belt of trees. The planting 

 of such a garden should be of the latest and the 

 earliest, to make it at once a pleasant shelter to 

 seek on a winter's day and a trysting place where 

 we may wait and watch for spring. A few good 

 shrubs should be there; perhaps, in favourable 

 localities, a camellia or two, of the delightful semi- 

 double kinds, like C. reticulata or C. Donckelaari, 

 looking northwards, for they like shade and also, 

 though quite hardy in the south, they prefer to 

 be guarded, by low-growing shrubs in front of 

 them, from keen winds, which do more harm to 

 their stems and roots than to leaves and branches. 



Amongst other shrubs might be named, for win- 

 ter effect, the Calif ornian tassel bush (Garry a 

 eliptica), which in favourable situations will dis- 

 pense with a wall, or some of the quite hardy 

 bright-berried trees and shrubs spindle trees 

 (Euonymus europceus and E. latifolia), the per- 

 sistent pink fruits of which open, flower-like, on 

 bare branches in late autumn ; or Skimmia For- 

 tunei; or even, as a low-growing bush to break 

 a too level surface, Cotoneaster microphylla, with 

 its crimson berries. Here, " in the lew," the 

 russet autumn buds of laurustinus would change 

 into milk-white flowers less tardily than in more 

 open positions, to gladden cloudy weather, for 

 there is no shrub that responds to shelter more 



